I have heard two horror stories in the last few days about people who lost all the photos stored on their computers. My sister-in-law's laptop was stolen and she is most upset about all the photos. I overheard a guy in line behind me at lunch talking about how his computer died and several years of family pictures were gone in an instant.

I've been thinking about getting an external drive so I can backup my computer before I heard these sad stories. Do any of my computer savvy friends have experience with these? I am not sure what to look for. I may order it online or go to Best Buy.

Thanks for the suggestion. We had just gotten our computer two months before we evacuated last year so I was able to fit everything on a thumb drive but I need more storage space after a whole year of additional pictures and computer usage.

The other thing I do is back up my photos to off storage sites like Flickr or Shutterfly or Imgaestation. Sometimes more than 1 just have to have an additional layer of backup. I know, paranoid much! And most of that stuff is free too!

I do load a good number of pics on Snapfish for printing so at least some of them are saved there. But not everything and it usually takes me a while after a holiday or event to decide what pics I want to print. So they sit on my computer unprotected! This makes me very nervous.